Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE
“Oh, Percy!” said Mrs. Weasley, and she threw herself into his arms.
Rufus Scrimgeour paused in the doorway, leaning on his walking stick
and smiling as he observed this affecting scene.
“You must forgive this intrusion,” he said, when Mrs. Weasley looked
around at him, beaming and wiping her eyes. “Percy and I were in the vicinity
— working, you know — and he couldn’t resist dropping in and seeing
you all.”
But Percy showed no sign of wanting to greet any of the rest of the family.
He stood, poker-straight and awkward-looking, and stared over everybody
else’s heads. Mr. Weasley, Fred, and George were all observing him, stonyfaced.
“Please, come in, sit down, Minister!” fluttered Mrs. Weasley, straightening
her hat. “Have a little purkey, or some tooding I mean —”
“No, no, my dear Molly,” said Scrimgeour. Harry guessed that he had
checked her name with Percy before they entered the house. “I don’t want
to intrude, wouldn’t be here at all if Percy hadn’t wanted to see you all so
badly...”
“Oh, Perce!” said Mrs. Weasley tearfully, reaching up to kiss him.
“...We’ve only looked in for five minutes, so I’ll have a stroll around the
yard while you catch up with Percy. No, no, I assure you I don’t want to
butt in! Well, if anybody cared to show me your charming garden... Ah, that
young man’s finished, why doesn’t he take a stroll with me?”
The atmosphere around the table changed perceptibly. Everybody looked
from Scrimgeour to Harry. Nobody seemed to find Scrimgeour’s pretense
that he did not know Harry’s name convincing, or find it natural that he
should be chosen to accompany the Minister around the garden when Ginny,
Fleur, and George also had clean plates.
“Yeah, all right,” said Harry into the silence.
He was not fooled; for all Scrimgeour’s talk that they had just been in the
area, that Percy wanted to look up his family, this must be the real reason
that they had come, so that Scrimgeour could speak to Harry alone.
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